‘Neither. I wish you’d help yourself to some brandy-and-soda yonder,’ interjected Mr. Hossack, pointing to a side-table on which those refreshments were provided, and ringing the bell clamorously; ‘I’ll order dinner before I unbosom myself. George,’ to the enthusiastic waiter, who appeared in prompt answer to the noisy summons, ‘the best you can do for this gentleman and me, at seven sharp; and don’t come fidgeting in and out to lay the cloth until five minutes before you bring the soup tureen. By the way, we’ll begin with oysters and Montrachet, and you can give us a bottle of Yquem afterwards. No sparkling wine. We’ll wind up with Chambertin, if you’ve a bottle in good condition. But don’t bring it half-frozen out of the cellar, or muddled by hasty thawing. Exercise judgment, George; you have to deal with connoisseurs. Now,’ continued this epicurean youth, flinging himself back into the depths of his chair, ‘before I begin my egotistical prosing, let me hear what you’ve been doing all this time, my Lucius.’ ‘That may be told in two words. Hard work.’ ‘Poor old Davoren!’ ‘Don’t take that simple statement as a complaint. It is work I like. I might have set up my Penates in what is called a genteel neighbourhood, and earned my crust a good deal more easily than I can earn it yonder. But I wanted wide experience—a complete initiation—and I went where humanity is thickest. The result has more than satisfied me. If ever I move westward it will be to Savile-row.’ The sybarite contemplated his friend admiringly, yet with a stifled yawn, as if the very contemplation of so much vital force were fatiguing. ‘Upon my word, I don’t know that I wouldn’t exchange my three-per-cents for your ambition, Lucius,’ he said. ‘To have something to achieve, something to win—that is the keenest rapture of the human mind, that makes the chief delight of the chase. Upon my honour, I envy you. I seem to awake to the conviction that it is a misfortune to be born with the proverbial silver spoon in one’s mouth.’ ‘The man who begins life with a fortune starts ahead of the penniless struggler in the race for fame,’ answered the surgeon. ‘There is plenty of scope for your ambition, Geoff, in spite of the three-per-cents.’ ‘What could I do?’ ‘Try to make yourself famous.’ ‘Not possible! Unless I took to a pea-green coat, like that rich young West Indian swell in the last generation. Fame! bah! for Brown, Jones, or Robinson to talk of making themselves famous is about as preposterous as it would be for Hampstead-hill to try and develop a volcano. Men born to fame have a special brand upon their foreheads, like the stamp on Veuve Clicquot’s champagne corks. I think I see it in the anxious lines that mark yours, Lucius.’ ‘There is the senate,’ said Davoren; ‘the natural aim of an Englishman’s ambition.’ ‘What! truckle to rural shopkeepers for the privilege of wasting the summer evenings and the spring tides in a stuffy manufactory of twaddle. _Pas si bête!_’